Every Brilliant Thing (not just Some Brilliant Things)

A wonderful part of the story of this hugely successful play is missing from this Guardian article. Sure, part of being a designer is being in the background, but in this case, it’s not just us; it’s a wonderful collaborative effort involving thousands of members of the public.

Simon Daw and I, then working under the collective name Scale, were approached by Duncan and George to create an installation to accompany readings of the short story that would eventually become Every Brilliant Thing. If memory serves, it was then called Sleeve Notes. We assembled a team of volunteers at our studio to write the list.

The installation was then shown at the Village Underground in Shoreditch, East London, as part of a club night, the name of which I’ve now forgotten. People were encouraged to add to the list. I have no idea how many did, but it was quite a lot.

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SLICE: London-Lahore

(Originally published in Blue Pages, the journal of The Society of British Theatre Designers)

Slice: London-Lahore is in an experimental project in a very real sense. As well as providing a framework to allow artists from two cities to respond to their built environment, it tests methods for long-distance collaboration. As has been reported in Blue Pages, I have previously visited the now defunct Theatre Department of the Pakistani National College of Arts to share ideas about teaching design, run workshops and seminars and, on my second trip, to design a show. But travelling is expensive, time-consuming, polluting and often fraught with red tape. Slice: London-Lahore offers an alternative approach.

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